Shift of national work to Minnesota results in benefit delays for local veterans

U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs(Photo: U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs)

Military veterans in Minnesota are having to wait much longer for their benefits claims because of a federal shift of backlogged cases to a regional office in St. Paul.

County veterans services directors say it's now taking as long as nine months to process claims for disability compensation and other benefits that previously took about 90 days.

The delays are due to a move by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to reduce a national backlog of veterans claims that generated widespread criticism, with some veterans waiting more than two years for their claims to be processed. The VA has promised to eliminate the backlog by 2015.

Minnesota had a better-than-average record of processing claims quickly.

As a result, the Veterans Benefits Administration gave the St. Paul office thousands of additional claims from other regional offices that were far behind.

That means Terry Ferdinandt, Stearns County veterans service officer, is just now receiving responses for claims he helped veterans file in February.

Ferdinandt met with staff from U.S. Sen. Al Franken's office in June and voiced his concerns. In a follow-up memo in late October, Ferdinandt wrote that his office has had claims sitting in the St. Paul office since March because of the additional claims the office was handling.

In the past, Stearns County received an average of 30-40 claims a week from the St. Paul office, Ferdinandt wrote. Since June, the county has received fewer than 50 total, he wrote, and most of those were submitted the previous October or November.

"If it is the VA's intent to do claims in 125 days, it isn't being met in Minnesota," Ferdinandt wrote.

The cases range from aging veterans of World War II, Korea or Vietnam who might be filing a claim for the first time for a service-related health issue to veterans back from recent deployments in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Ferdinandt wrote that passing the work to another office isn't the answer. The backlogged claims should be returned to the regional offices where they came from and those directors held accountable.

George Fiedler, Benton County's veterans services director, said he is seeing the same delays.

"That's true all across Minnesota," he said.

Fiedler recalled a training session in St. Paul he attended earlier this year, where leaders showed him stacks of files sent from other regional offices that they had to process. Fiedler said his comment was, "Those who are more productive get penalized."

In response to the complaints, Franken sent a letter about the claims delays to Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki in August questioning the decision to send the additional claims to the St. Paul office.

"Minnesota veterans should not be punished precisely because our (regional office) works more effectively than others elsewhere in the country," Franken wrote. "To do that would subject Minnesota's veterans to precisely the problem we are trying to resolve — veterans not getting their benefits as quickly as they should."

In an Oct. 7 response, Shinseki wrote that the Veterans Benefits Administration deployed a national brokering strategy to distribute claims across regional offices to ensure that the oldest claims are completed.

"The national workload management approach ensures that veterans who have waited the longest receive a decision as soon as possible, regardless of the state in which they reside," he wrote.

The benefits administration initially focused on claims that had been pending more than two years. It is now prioritizing those older than one year, Shinseki wrote. He added that the St. Paul regional office's average processing time for claims was 112.5 days at the end of August, among the best in the nation.

Information from a VA spokesman stated that the old system of assigning claims to the regional office closest to a veteran's home led to inefficiencies and fewer veterans overall receiving timely decisions.

The Veterans Benefits Administration is moving toward a paperless claim system that will eliminate those geographic boundaries and streamline processing, the VA stated. As of November, almost 70 percent of claims had been converted into the paperless system.

In a written response to the Times last week, Franken noted that he authored a bill with Rep. Tim Walz to reduce the claims delay.

"The fundamental issue is making sure Minnesota veterans are getting the benefits they're entitled to as quickly as possible," Franken stated. "I introduced legislation to make that happen, but until it passes, I will continue to press the VA to fix the backlog problems we have going on here in Minnesota."

Ferdinandt notes that the claims issue is with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, not with the VA Health Care System in St. Cloud, where veterans are able to get timely appointments.

As the backlog shrinks, the wait time should diminish, and veterans waiting on claims eventually should receive their full benefits back to the date their claim was filed. Still, for unemployed or low-income veterans, waiting can be a hardship.